


Qase Study

by PenroseSun



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: I literally cannot stress enough how unrequited this is, Introspection, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29672793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenroseSun/pseuds/PenroseSun
Summary: There is a game which they play. Sometimes, Q fantasizes that Picard cares enough to hate it.
Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	Qase Study

There is a human on a starship. Q watches it as it moves across the heavens – a lifetime at warp speed; so slow, so short. It crawls, like an ant on the side of a nuclear warhead.

The human’s name is Jean-Luc Picard, and he, like the starship, has never ventured beyond the Milky Way galaxy, and likely never will. He is organic; his time-experience is strictly linear; he senses the universe solely through sonic vibrations, electromagnetic repulsion, and a small number of primitive photon receptors. By all rights, he is boring, and Q assumes (or increasingly, hopes) that he will tire of him.

The first time that they encountered one another was a lark, and at the outset Q had assumed it would be the end of their interactions, and indeed, of Picard himself. This proved incorrect – and very unfortunately, it paved the way for a pattern of incorrectness; of misestimation. Over the years, Picard has proven to be… _difficult_ to predict, and this despite being entirely predictable and easily simulatable. Q still doesn’t understand it, as much as he tries. Picard is a fundamentally lesser lifeform; Q has had kitchen appliances more intelligent and technologically advanced. More emotionally advanced too, in fact. There’s nothing at all in the human that should hold his attention, and far less that should _command_ it. And yet…

It’s subtle at first. Q is simply full of new ideas pertaining to humanity, generally speaking – and Galaxy class starships, and tea-drinking cultures, and the years 2305-2431, specifically. He presents his plans to the Continuum; smiles and gives a little bow when they approve. Picard is a perfect outlet for his creative genius. Q’s constant thoughts, and hopes, and musings are _diligence_ , on his part. He’s being useful, and also, Picard happens to be there, often. There’s nothing more to it than that.

Of course, when his schemes fail (and they do fail; _why_ do they fail?) he has more – hundreds more; thousands. The Continuum can do this; the Continuum can do that… except that all of his ideas are still about Picard, always invariably about Picard, and some of his colleagues are beginning to notice.

The period is just a recent interest of his, he claims. An artistic inspiration, if you will; no more than that. Basically all humans are good entertainment when you poke at them, and Picard is just one of that general class, except Q met him first, so he’s always an obvious choice whenever Q finds himself blocked. _I mean, haven’t any of you ever adopted a pet?_ It was all harmless fun, really.

Q hears whispers. They say that very few artistic periods last this many centuries; that hobbies aren’t supposed to occupy most of your waking thoughts. That it’s one thing to keep a pet, and quite another to take the lab rat home with you.

There are some trains of thought which it is better not to follow; Q chooses to distract himself instead.

There is a game which they play. Sometimes, Q fantasizes that Picard cares enough to hate it.

It goes like this –

Q appears in Picard’s ready room, turns his earl grey replicator program into one for a very robust lapsang souchong, and imbeds an np-hard problem into a basic function of all of his viewscreens.

–Or, Q hands his powers to a woefully incompetent human, and goads Picard into betting the fate of humanity on the outcome.

–Or, Picard awakes in a featureless void, halfway between life and death, and Q forces him to come to deep and fundamental realizations about his own past and personality.

–Or, Q introduces the Enterprise to the Borg.

–Or.

He cannot hide from the inevitable truth that is always waiting just behind it all. The problem is only getting worse, not better. He thinks, he waits, he crafts his ideas obsessively, beautifully–

And he finds it does not matter, because Picard’s fury and frustration and annoyance is never enough, or never right, or never _something_.

“Q, what do you want?” Picard asks, looking through him. And Q withers, and retreats, and spends millennia cutting apart the moment; dissecting it for any hint of an answer besides the one that he already knows.

When he is human, and trouncing around Ten Forward like a buffoon, Guinan notices where his gaze lingers ( _stupid_ human gaze, forced to pick a single subject). She looks at him in disbelief, which quickly shades into pity and contempt.

“…Is that why you came here? Really?” Guinan says. “Captain Picard is the worst person you could have possibly picked – I almost feel sorry for you.”

“He means nothing to me,” snaps Q. “He’s a toy; that’s all.”

“Keep telling yourself that, honey,” she snorts, and leaves him alone with his ale.

Guinan knows _nothing_. It has been eons since Q has bothered to lie to himself about this. When he says that Picard means nothing to him, he is honest – Picard is dead already, less than a bare century from now, and Q has already tracked his atoms across the cosmos, and knows that they will never again hold his interest. When he says that Picard is a toy, he is correct – a fiendish and unsolvable puzzle is a kind of a toy. Human language is leaden on the tongue of his ridiculous, physical mouth.

He should have picked a slug. Or a fungus. Or a Morgovian gas cloud. There are hundreds of beings without tongues – and without gazes, too.

_And Picard might have studied a Morgovian gas cloud._

It doesn’t matter. This will be the last time.

Q excises his feelings for Picard as soon as he is able, cutting them out like so much necrotic tissue, and expands his horizons. He reverses the evolution in a small Delta Quadrant system; breeds several prize orchids, and then discards them. He composes a solidly third-place star, and then tosses it into a singularity.

Was he always this aimless?

Surely he knew how to keep entertained at one point. He doesn’t remember ever being this way before. He hates it, and he hates the fact that he hates it, and more than anything he hates that, tumor-like, every feeling which he cut out of his consciousness has grown back within the decade. A couple of middling eras more, and he is going out of his mind with desperation. Why did he ever think he could escape this? What good did getting rid of emotions do, if it left him this empty?

…He was never aimless when he was tormenting the Enterprise. He was never bored when he was dealing with Starfleet.

So, Q pops back to humanity, and toys with Vash, and Sisko, and Janeway. They are useless, and boring, and far too easy to provoke. None of them are even slightly worth his time.

 _Why?_ he wonders, always and continuously. _What possible difference is there between them and him? They’re all the same class of lifeform; they’re all useless, all barbaric._

‘A dangerous, savage, child-race,’ he’d called them once, and he was right. Picard is no different. He is no different at all.

Q moves through existence like he is walking through a dream. He clings to scraps – pores over the slightest twitch in Picard’s jaw, the smallest spike in his blood sugar. Q takes copies of Picard – smears them across a hundred million personality simulations. He tortures and pleasures him every way imaginable – breaks him over, and over, and over again. It’s never enough.

Q wants Picard to see him, to know him, to _want_ him. He fantasizes about being more than just an obstacle; an object. He imagines Picard looking at him (looking _at_ him), and tastes the place he could hold in his heart. Q is desperate for Picard’s acknowledgement. He _needs_ it the way the human needs oxygen.

Not that Picard could ever truly see him, of course. Not with that brain; not with those eyes.

 _Would you like me to fashion you new ones?_ Q muses, now and again, and again, and again. _I could give you a thousand eyes, and a hundred added senses – let you see the universe brilliantly lit in gamma radiation and radio waves. You’ve never seen a supernova properly – never watched black body radiation spill from the center of your galaxy in real-time. I could give you all that and more – I could show you beauty that would bring you to your knees. Ask, Jean-Luc. You only need ask._

But Picard will never ask, and Q knows this, the way he knows that the universe is vast, and that a human life is short. It would never even occur to Picard to ask — not even when Q is there and offering. Q can tempt him with the world a million times over, and Picard will never blink, will never flinch. Will never care the slightest bit that it’s _Q_ who’s making the offer, no matter how much that means.

What Q feels is pathological, and he knows this as well, intimately. He told Amanda Rogers, once, that her affections were absurd, and that they would only ever bring her grief. He was correct on this point, and the thoughts that race through his mind as he plots the progress of the Enterprise have no bearing on that truth. It’s not that you can’t love an insect the way that you love an equal; it’s that you shouldn’t. It’s that once you start thinking of a bag of organic fluids like it’s a person, you start imagining treating it like a person. And that way lies nothing but pain… because the best it knows is how to treat you like an insect.

Q would destroy humanity for a single moment of Picard’s undivided attention… and he wouldn’t even get it if he did.

He buries the thought – locks it away, with the feeling of Picard’s Borg implants, and the sound of his screams on Cardassia, and the taste of his father’s wine. It’s of no concern. He’s not drawn to Picard because he’s different; he’s drawn to Picard because he’s fun. His private thoughts do not need to matter. He can carry on as before.

Q turns all the com badges on the Enterprise into goldfish, and feels himself again.

“The truth is,” Q tells Picard when he sees him next, “I have a debt to repay.” He doesn’t, but he can always go back in time and give himself one. Picard scowls, and the game is back on. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

He spirits the captain away on a shuttle craft, then brings him back again.

He throws a couple of fun space-time anomalies in the direction of the Enterprise, and laughs as they scramble.

Once, Q even offers to join the crew.

He grows reckless; forgets himself and the things which drove him to this point. Why worry about the Continuum? Q has entertainment enough when he wants it. And Picard is so easy to manipulate, so fun to prod at.

His games become more daring. The stakes become more inane.

It’s not enough to get Picard to make hard choices. It’s not enough to get under his skin. No, Q is bored by even that now – how did something so simple used to entertain him anyway? He wants Picard to notice him. And if he won’t… well then, perhaps Q is simply not trying hard enough.

Q corners Picard in his ready room – leans in far too close – whispers words into Picard’s ear, breath hot against the curve of his neck. He touches the man’s shoulder just so, simulates the right combination of pheromones and physiological responses to make his intentions clear to any primitive. Any second now, Picard will pull away in disgust. Q waits for it with bated breath.

Picard does not pull away.

The moment that he realizes what Q is doing is clear, though. His posture changes – a stiffening in his shoulders, and a twitch in his jaw.

“Oh,” Picard says, and all his voice is laced with is disappointment. “Oh, is _that_ what this has all been about.”

“Why, whatever do you mean by that?” Q asks innocently, and then just to make the point, he trails a hand along Picard’s thigh – an unmistakable gesture, sure to make Picard lash out.

Picard gives him a witheringly dismissive glance, the sort that he might give to a child, and then makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. “Oh, fine, then. Tell me, Q – If I sleep with you, will you leave my ship alone?”

And very suddenly, the game is no longer fun.

Q sees it playing out in an instant, a hundred times over, in a hundred variations. He sees Picard’s resignation – his _indifference_ – imagines fucking Picard in some ridiculous corporeal form, while the man lies back and thinks of France.

The proposition makes him sick to his stomach (and it’s been so very long since Q last considered having a functioning digestive tract). No, he cannot do that. He will not. The thought alone is gutting him – and he will spend centuries replaying this conversation, millennia hating himself for it.

_Foolish. Oh, so foolish, Q. Do not ask questions that you do not want answered._

“Well?” Picard says, and reaches for the clasp of his uniform – calls his bluff.

And Q can only laugh in Picard’s face, a ghastly pantomime of nonchalance.

“Do you seriously think I’d derive anything whatsoever from engaging in _your_ primitive mating rituals?” he says. “Please, mon capitaine. Have a _little_ dignity.”

This, Q decides, will be the last time. He certainly won’t care to try again.

How do you hold on to something as ephemeral as a human life? How do you treasure a single grain of sand in an infinite universe?

Q does not ask these questions. Instead, in the secret, hidden parts of his essence that he dares not show others, he weeps, and asks, _What went wrong, to make me feel this way? Why am I broken? Why do I care?_

There are probably casebooks written about this, Q supposes. He wonders if higher lifeforms than him have a name for his bizarre paraphilia – if they’ve cured it, or culled it. It’s neither here nor there, but he thinks that it might be nice to know.

Q watches Picard, sees him vivisected: his entire history spread out before him like a fractal web of neurons and arteries. It’s nothing upon nothing. The Enterprise will never venture beyond this single galaxy. Picard will never think beyond the limitations of his own fragile mind.

“Why are you here, Q?” Picard has asked him, so many times now. “What do you want?”

Q doesn’t know. Q doesn’t care to know. He tells himself that it’s a whim, a distraction – a pleasant way to spend a bored afternoon. Perhaps he is obsessed – but he’s had obsessions before. They fade; they change. Q knows that this one will too, and he’s certainly never cared to analyze it beyond that. Why should he, when none of it matters? And it _doesn’t_ , truly it doesn’t.

…Q is lying through his teeth.

 _I will never beg, and I am begging you, Captain,_ Q screams, into a plane of existence which Picard will never know. _Just give me this. Give me a single moment of your time. Love or hate or whatever other misguided name you give to the emotion, just give me a single moment when you care. One moment where I mean something more to you than your ship, or your blasted first officer, or your worthless species. That’s all I want. I burn for it, hotter than your stars, sharper than all the pain I could ever inflict on your pathetic frame. It would be nothing to you. It would be everything to me. Please, please, please…!_

His tantrums do not last long, when he has them. After a century or so, Q brushes himself off, shaking the cosmic dust and space-time detritus out of his form, and surveys the ruin around him. Ah, well. The Calamarain homeworld was a stupid planet anyway; it’s no great loss.

But… this cannot happen again, and Q knows it. The Continuum is losing patience with him by the day. If he doesn’t pull himself together soon, he’ll run through what very little good will he has left.

Q ponders his options. There’s no real _reason_ that Picard has held his attention for this long. He’s only a human, after all. Even one more attempt would probably be enough – two more, at _most_. He should just scratch the itch; excise the demon – make one last foray into this lesser lifeform’s existence, just to get it completely out of his system.

There was a trial at Farpoint, still ongoing. And an abduction by the Borg, at some point. Perhaps he can send the Enterprise hurtling through time, or force Picard to be the death of humanity. There are hundreds of possibilities, any one of which would do. Yes, just once more, and then he’ll be done with it. This will certainly be the last time.

Q watches the Enterprise as it crawls through space, and plans.


End file.
